IV. Erin & Greg
You are not like the regulars,
the masquerade revelers,
drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten.
Beads of sweat trickled down Erin's forehead as she jolted awake with a sharply inhaled breath of air.
Quickly regaining her senses, she curled her fingers around one of the many pillows cocooning her body and hurled it in frustration across the room with an aggravated shout: "Goddamnit!" Tossing one more pillow just for good measure, she sunk back against the two that remained propped up behind her and clamped her hand around her mouth before any more unfiltered sounds fell from it. Never one to admit this, but she was also acutely aware that the action was her way of holding back the sobs that were currently lumped together in her throat just begging to come out.
Yet again, in her sleepy state she had been unable to determine fiction from reality and was woken up by one of her many hellish nightmares that always strayed too close to the line of reality for comfort.
Unluckily for her, this particular one was a mesh of too many memories she wished nothing more than to eradicate from existence. Charlie, Nadia, Yates, Bunny, the many men Bunny chose to bring home that always got a little too friendly with her…they were all there in her dream, each of them inflicting their own unique kind of pain on her.
"Get a grip Erin," she mumbled against her hand. "It was just a dream." She repeated the two sentences like a mantra, forcing herself to maybe not believe the words, but at least fall for their demand. Ever since Olivia and Madison all but moved into Nadia's old room, this verbal repetition had become her new coping method when the nightmares became just a little too much for her and Jay was not here to distract her from it all. Her previous system involved lots of screaming and liquor and, well, that probably was never a good solution to begin with.
However, she wasn't so sure this new practice worked as well as she tried to convince herself it did.
Too shaken up to make an attempt to fall back to sleep, Erin flung the slightly damp sheets from her body and decided that maybe tonight a shot of whiskey was needed to calm her mind. Welcoming the chill that swept through her bones, she ignored her mind's call to at least put on a pair of pants before she wandered out to the kitchen in nothing more than a pair of cheeky underwear and one of Jay's t-shirts that she 'forgot' to remind him to take back to his apartment after he spent the night at hers.
Stumbling down the hall, still groggy and disoriented from the state she had been unceremoniously pulled from, her mind was knocked back into place when she finally registered that the kitchen lights were already on and someone was already nursing a cup of something at her small kitchen table.
"O-Olivia?" she rasped, confused as to why her boyfriend's sister was sitting in the uncomfortable table chair she bought more out of necessity than desire. "What are you doing up?"
Erin was distinctly aware of the way Olivia's eyes raked up and down her body, taking in her disheveled sight. She knew she should have listened to her mind and put on a damn pair of pants.
"Same as you I bet," Olivia shrugged, turning her attention back to whatever it was she was staring at on the wall. "Couldn't sleep."
"Nightmares?" Erin drawled, curious to hear the girl's answer. It had been a little over a week since she had offered Nadia's old room up to the girl and she was more than a bit flummoxed over the fact that she had yet to get a good read on her. Olivia was very much an enigma to everyone she had come into contact with since her apparent return to Chicago and Erin was determined to be the first to crack her. Besides, focusing on the mystery the brown-haired girl presented her with was a hell of a better way to focus her mind on something other than the things that haunted her the moment she tried to put it to rest.
"I'd have to actually sleep to have those," Olivia mumbled, taking a long pull from the mug she was gripping like a lifeline.
"You're not sleeping?" Erin asked in shock. Was sitting in the kitchen a nightly routine for the girl?
Olivia shrugged, but said nothing and Erin, who had always been exceptionally bad at making girl talk when she was at her sharpest, failed to come up with a follow-up response. So, she sat down across the girl and silently inspected her like she was some species in a lab.
Even in the dead of night, her hair looked perfect as it draped over both her shoulders and down her back. The fact that she had no makeup on meant nothing because, besides the practically vanquished bruise on her face and the visible bags under her eyes, Jay's younger sister looked flawless. 'Those Halstead genes…' she thought to herself before demanding her eyes and mind to look beyond Olivia's surface level and see if there was anything else she could learn about her in the silence.
Unluckily for Erin, Olivia must have sensed what she was trying to do because she perked up in her seat and snuck a sneaky, suggestive glance in Erin's direction. "That's my brother's shirt," the younger girl smirked. "He skipped class to get tickets to that show. I remember both Mom and Dad being pissed at him for weeks. They almost didn't let him go."
She knew that; Jay had told her the first time she plucked the shirt from one of his drawers at his apartment to wear to bed. But she could just see how excited Olivia was to spill dirt on her brother, so she acted like she didn't.
"He got two tickets and I was so mad he didn't take me," Olivia continued, her eyes glossing over lightly as she lost herself in the memory. "He took Greg instead and the two of them were such assholes about the whole thing, sending me tons of pictures and videos. But they did bring me home a t-shirt. That same one actually, all three of us have it." Her words faltered for a moment as her eyes sharpened. "All three of us had it."
Erin's own eyes widened at the harsh tone and immediately felt like the girl was prosecuting her for something she had no control over. Jay did not tell her that part of the story. Then again, why would he? Up until last week, any and all information regarding the youngest Halstead had been kept a secret from her.
"He doesn't know I have it," she tried to placate. "He wore it here one day and I…well, you know…he left in something else, and I just haven't given it back." God, she should not be this awkward talking to Olivia. She was Erin fucking Lindsay, a badass detective in the Intelligence Unit. She stared down the worst of the worst the city had to offer without even flinching. How was she being reduced to a bumbling idiot by a young girl who was only here because Erin offered to let her stay here?
"I left mine at the house when I left," Olivia's angered tone continued and it took Erin a moment to realize that she was not angry with her, but at…well, she wasn't too sure at what yet. Herself? Jay? Mouse? All of three of them? "They left theirs there too. Jay must have gone back for his."
"You three were close?"
Olivia nodded but said nothing on the matter.
"Oh hey," she exclaimed, smacking the palm of her hand against the table lightly. "I totally didn't get the chance to tell you earlier, but I found a place for Madison and me to stay. We can move in as early as next week as long as Thomas gives it the seal of approval. He's going to fly in on Friday to check in with Mads and me and see the place."
Erin was not expecting that. At all.
"You're moving out?" she asked, her disbelief evident. "How? You don't even have a job."
Again, her question was met with nothing more than a simple shrug. "I really appreciate you letting me stay here, like seriously, you don't even know how clutch this has been."
"Olivia," Erin spoke sternly, finally feeling wide awake and like her true self. "Where did you get the money to move out?"
The girl stared down Erin with a quirked eyebrow that the detective knew was meant to intimidate her. It didn't.
Rolling her eyes and accepting defeat after a very tense minute, Olivia straightened up as high as her spine would allow, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and said flippantly, "I have money."
"From where?"
"My savings account. Contrary to what Jay has probably told you, I did work some when I was in Boston."
Erin scoffed. "Considering what Jay told me, you definitely didn't work enough to have enough saved to sustain a rent while taking care of yourself and Madison." She was wide awake now and sick of all this bullshitting around.
"Quit the interrogation Erin," Olivia snapped. "Look, I appreciate you letting us stay here and I appreciate the concern, but Madison and I are all set and, barring any complications, will be moving out next week. Now, if you don't mind, I think I might actually give getting some sleep tonight another chance." She stood from the table and, with a quick yet firm "Goodnight," exited the kitchen. Moments later, Erin heard Nadia's bedroom door clicking shut.
Blood boiling and threatening to bubble over, Erin considered letting the girl just go and leaving the conversation as is. But—and this may very well be the result of how agitated her nightmare made her—she came to a different conclusion and decided to go after Olivia. Mindful to not make too much noise—Madison was sleeping in the same room she was heading to after all—Erin carefully reached out her hand, ready to twist the doorknob open, when her ears picked up on the faint sound of someone sniffling on the other side.
It was with a sense of dread that she realized Olivia was crying. Heart plummeting into the pit of her stomach, Erin slowly released her hand from the doorknob and debated trekking back to her room, her mind buzzing with questions and possible answers.
Had she upset the girl? Probably…she was being a bitch and pressing Olivia for answers she clearly did not want to give. Was she bothered by the fact that Erin had on Jay's concert t-shirt? Well, Olivia couldn't have been happy to see something that held a good amount of sentimental value being worn by her brother's girlfriend because he left it at her apartment after they slept together. What was the deal with her attitude towards her money? Where did she get it? How could she afford to move out? Erin had a bunch of theories, each one crazier and less likely than the first but all of them relatively probable. Olivia obviously had money and, judging by the way she knew Jay scrimped and saved every penny he could, Erin knew it was not Halstead family money.
Another sequence of sniffles interrupted Erin's thoughts and she suddenly felt horrible for entertaining a plethora of conspiracy theories about her guest. Whatever this girl's deal was, something was upsetting her, and Erin was not completely devoid of compassion to let her try and hide her cries on the floor alone.
Lowering herself to the ground, Erin pressed her back against the door and softly called out, "Liv? You okay in there?"
Her question was met with silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. And then, speaking as if she had not just been muffling her cries, Olivia replied in a calm, nonchalant tone, "Yeah, I'm fine."
The echoes of a body shuffling around leaked through the crack under the door, informing Erin that there would be no further conversation that night. She stayed at the door though, listening until she was one hundred percent certain that this time, Olivia actually made it into the bed.
Knowing that she needed to be at work first thing in the morning to help the team comb through Dr. Reybold's files and sort through all of the witness statements they had gathered over the past two days should have been enough motivation for Erin to follow Olivia's lead and go back to bed. But she did no such thing. Instead, she remained on the ground with her back pressed up against the door to Nadia's room.
An eerie sense of déjà vu kept her where she was and removed the will to move from her body. The muffled cries, the fake assurances that all was well, the soft conversations through the door…she had done this all before with the room's previous inhabitant. More times than she was even able to count, Erin's trip to bed had been interrupted by Nadia and her personal struggles. Most of their relationship had been forged with their backs against the closed door and almost all of Nadia's problems had been resolved, forgiven, and forgotten by whatever power rested within the slab of wood that separated the two of them.
Nadia.
Tears sprung to Erin's own eyes at the thought of the girl whose life had been robbed from her way too soon.
After her…sabbatical…Erin committed herself to only ever thinking about the good times she had with the ex-druggie who became more like family than her actual family. It was the only solution she managed to concoct that didn't make her want to turn straight back to the bottle. 'Why forget the good?' was what she told herself when she was sober enough to realize that the drugs and alcohol made her forget everything and not just the bad. But now, sitting here in the same position she always used to as Nadia confessed a whole lot of bad to her, Erin was beginning to feel her mindset slipping. However, the burning ache in her veins for some sort of relief was dulled by her sudden desire to do more, to say more.
Could Olivia be just like Nadia was: a lost, broken girl hiding within fragile shell outlined falsified jagged edges?
Hesitantly, Erin rose to her feet and slowly opened the bedroom door before her reason started to kick in. She didn't let Nadia push her around in her own home, no way in hell was she going to let Olivia do so as well.
Without the curtains drawn, the moon's light was unfiltered and allowed Erin to have a clear view of the one room she tactfully avoided at all costs; she sucked in a deep breath at how little it had changed from when Nadia was its occupant. A pile of dirty clothes sat piled in the corner next to the double dresser with the TV perched on top of it. One of the drawers had been left open halfway and Erin's eyes tricked her into thinking that the arm of a long-sleeve shirt hung limply over the side of it. Piles of books were on top of both the dresser and on the nightstand next to the bed. The titles were a mystery to her, but the thickness of some of them were not. A glass of water was perched on the top book on the nightstand and next to it was a phone plugged into its charger and a pair of reading glasses Erin was just as shocked to see that Olivia needed as she was when she discovered Nadia had a pair as well.
Yes, she had seen this set up before and the familiarity of it all provided her no comfort whatsoever. In fact, it scared her. This scenario had already left her more broken and damaged than anything else in her life…could she really risk going through that again?
'Stop it,' she thought to herself as she cautiously stepped into the room. 'Olivia is not Nadia.'
But why did the similarities between the two suddenly have to be so glaring?
"What are you doing in here Erin?" Olivia called out in a tired drawl. "I told you I'm fine."
"You did," she agreed in a quiet whisper, her eyes skirting over Olivia's body and to the little one that was curled up next to it. "But I call bullshit."
"That's not for you to call," Nadia's words echoed painfully in the back of her head, blocking out the sound of Olivia's tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth as she carefully removed the covers from her body and tiptoed over to where Erin was standing in the doorway.
Erin came back to the present just in time to take in the sight of Olivia standing predatorily close to her. "I. Am. Fine." The girl hissed. "And even if I wasn't, what makes you think I would tell you otherwise? I don't even know you."
"That's why you should tell me," Erin pointed out, adding a little of her own edge to the words. "Because I don't know you so therefore, I can't judge you. I can only listen."
Those were the words that got Nadia to finally let her all the way in. Erin mentally crossed her fingers that they'd have the same effect on Olivia.
"Listen and go run back and report everything to my brother," Olivia countered, providing new lines to an already well-established scene. "I am many things Erin, but I am not a fool. Now, if you don't mind, I would really like to try and get some sleep tonight." And then, in an entirely new scene altogether, Olivia placed both her hands on Erin's shoulders and shoved her out of the room.
…
Stomping up the stairs, Erin willed with all her might that her efforts to wake up extra early so that she could arrive to work before everyone else would not be in vain. Still so frustrated with how the events of last night played out, she needed time to be by herself so that she could not only calm down but put her frustration to good use without anyone judging her for it.
She was more than well aware that the whole unit still felt the need to walk on eggshells around her, scared there was a hidden, ticking time bomb on her that they hadn't managed to find and get under control. In theory, she knew she couldn't blame them—she more than fucked up and went off the rails in the days, weeks, and months following Nadia's murder—but she wished they didn't make it so damn obvious, especially now that they were clued into hers and Hank's personal connection to Reybold's case. It was almost as if they knew the second something jumped off in an unsavory way, they would have to rely on just themselves to rein both her and Hank in and that made them want to proceed with extra caution.
Their concern was sweet, and she honestly loved them for it, but she was desperate for a minute to process through all of this shit on her own. She wanted a second to read the statements from Reybold's victims and get pissed about the torture he put them through. She needed a moment to disconnect Olivia from Nadia's memory and come to terms with the fact that what may have worked with one, will not necessary be the solution for the other. She needed more than a few minutes to just take a breath and recollect herself because last night's nightmare still lingered prominently in her mind.
She just needed time to herself and arriving to the district at six o'clock in the morning was the only way she was convinced she was going to get it.
Hank didn't normally show up until around 7:30 and the rest of the team trickled in between 8:00 and 8:30 (8:45 in Ruzek's case). So that meant she had roughly an hour and a half to just work and be by herself; that thought alone was enough to put a small smile on her face.
The smile's presence didn't last long.
"Mouse?" she shrieked as she caught sight of the beanie and flannel-clad tech specialist twirling a pen around his fingers as he spun around in his chair. "What the hell are you doing here?"
The spinning stopped and her colleague and friend turned to her in surprise. "L-Lindsay, hey uh, what are you doing here?"
"I am here to work," she said stiffly, trying not to let her anger at his presence in the bullpen be known. "What are you doing here?"
His eyes quickly darted away from her own and became especially interested in the pen in his hands. "Thought I'd get here early and uh, see if there was anything else I could uh, could do to help the case." It was a bold face lie that Erin let slide. She recognized the signs of someone struggling and Mouse was very clearly struggling with something. 'Was everybody?' she thought to herself as she nodded and proceeded to finish the journey to her own desk. Heaving a sigh and rolling her eyes at how foolish she was to think she'd get time to herself in a freaking police station, Erin sat down at her desk and started to sort through the first file she managed to get her hands on.
The two of them "worked" quietly for about twenty minutes and Erin almost forgot she was not the alone when Mouse tentatively asked, "How's uh, how's Liv doing?"
"She's a complete bitch," Erin muttered back to him, quickly underlining one last line in the statement she was reading before shutting the file. Connecting her hazel eyes with Mouse's crystal blue ones, she held back no feelings as she launched into a mini rant about her houseguest. "At first, I thought I'd give her a break because she was clearly going through something and just needed time to adjust to everything. But it's been what? A little over a week? I swear she's gotten worse. She acts like a total brat and doesn't seem to have any regard for anyone but herself. I actually think I am going to be happy when she moves out next week."
Erin didn't like the way Mouse pursed his lips and said nothing to her in response.
"What?" she challenged, daring him with her eyes to provide her proof that what she said wasn't fiction but fact. "Come on, you can tell me."
Mouse deflected her steely gaze, becoming fascinated once more with the pen in his hands. "She's not a bitch," he contested lowly. "I promise you, she's not."
"Well, she's done little to show me otherwise."
"How long did it take for you to get over, well, you know?"
'Walking on eggshells,' she sarcastically thought, picking up on how Mouse was unable to bring himself to say Nadia's name. 'They all walk on damn eggshells.'
"What does that have to do with anything?" Running on barely any sleep, mind still filled with too much fog, and it not even being seven in the morning yet, Erin was failing to see the relevance of bringing up her notorious failure to grieve normally. Not that she ever found evidence that there was a normal way to grieve…and believe her, out of sheer desperation in those first few weeks she tried.
Mouse looked at her thoughtfully for a few moments before speaking up and saying with an alarming amount of coolness, "I just thought you'd understand her better because of what you went through, that's all. You didn't have a time frame, why should she?"
His words were like a slap to her face: hard, unexpected, and leaving behind a sharp, lingering sting that made it difficult to immediately forget the action and move on.
She's not a bitch…I just thought you'd understand her better…why should she? The simple phrases were both enlightening and befuddling—the perfect contradiction.
On a base level, Mouse was right. In the craziness that was Olivia's unexpected arrival and move into her home, topped with the stress of Reybold's case following her around everywhere she went, Erin had stupidly forgotten that the younger girl was grieving the loss of her best friend.
I just thought you'd understand her better.
Erin was filled with shame at how carelessly she overlooked that particular detail about the girl and pinned her with the label "bitch," which was anything but fair. When her own best friend died, how horrible had she acted? She sure as hell acted a whole lot worse than being just a bitch. She was malicious and cruel and insufferable and determined to burn every bridge she built in her time as a sober, productive citizen of Chicago. When Nadia died, she reverted back to her worst self before the ball even reached the ground; there were no moments of grace and no one around willing to defend her.
She's not a bitch.
Erin didn't know Olivia. Neither Jay, Will, or Mouse ever let on that she existed. Now that the youngest Halstead was back, she managed to pick up on details about her from the three guys here and there but nothing as revealing as Mouse's admittance. She's not a bitch.
In all of hoopla, yet again stupidly, she had forgotten that Mouse had some sort of a history with Olivia. The way they reacted when they were reunited was something she tucked away in the back of her mind to bring up at a later, more appropriate date but was overshadowed by all of the events that followed. Her "Hey Greggy," the way he turned to ash and dropped his papers to the floor and bolted from the room in terror…all of it barged its way to the forefront of her mind. Mouse knew Olivia…she wasn't exactly sure how, but she had a feeling their relationship went much deeper than him just being her brother's best friend. Which was why, she felt no need to distrust him when he asserted that the girl currently staying in her apartment was not the bitch she was letting everyone believe her to be.
'Shame on you for giving up so goddamn easily,' she silently criticized herself. 'Shame on you.'
Olivia was grieving. Her best friend died and left her with a child. If being a bitch was her only coping method, Erin was quite honestly in no position to judge her—not one bit.
"Look Erin," Mouse spoke up, his tone back to its normal quietness and hesitancy. "She's a good kid, one of the best people I know, you just, y-you just gotta give her some time to come around."
"She just makes it so hard." Erin wished the whine would vacate from her tone. "I don't…Na-Nadia was tough to crack but I was eventually able to get through to her. And she had drugs and God knows what else in her system."
Erin did not miss the way Mouse flinched at the mention of Nadia's name. Months may have passed, but that didn't mean that everyone's healing process over what happened to her had been fully completed. "As similar as they may seem, Liv is not Nadia. She's her own person and you can't go about this like she isn't."
Not liking how deeply personal this conversation was getting, Erin quickly pulled her lips up into a teasing smile and, with a light chuckle, teased the tech geek. "Mouse, I think this is the most I've ever heard you speak. You've been holding out on us buddy."
Shoulders hunching, his cheeks turned a deep shade of embarrassed red. Twirling around once in his chair, he halted it in front of his computer screen (which had since gone dark), and after a second's thought, stood up and grabbed his leather jacket from the back of his chair. "Think about what I said, yeah? You're both good for each other and will figure it out." He exited the bullpen before she could find any words to respond with.
He saw her before she saw him and knowing that almost had him turning around and walking right back out the door he just came through. Almost…
It was his decision to text her, his decision to suggest they meet for a cup of coffee (or, in her case, a cup of tea), and his decision to pick this particular place of all places. He couldn't bail, not when this had all been his idea. And so, with a shuddering breath, he strode towards the table she was sitting at with a false sense of confidence that he was positively certain everyone in the little coffee shop twenty minutes outside of the city saw right through.
Liv was too engrossed in the book she was reading to notice his arrival; she didn't even flinch when he pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. Knowing that her obliviousness was not intentional, he found her actions endearing. As much as she had changed, it was still nice to see that some things—the important things—about her hadn't.
Greg watched in amusement as Will and Jay played some abbreviated version of mercy in the middle row of the Mrs. Halstead's visibly used and well-loved van. With Jay at thirteen and Will at fifteen, there was hardly anything that the two brothers didn't turn into a physical altercation these days and Greg was only partially ashamed at how much enjoyment he got watching the two brothers try and duke it out.
Without turning to face Liv, who willingly agreed to share the back row with him because of previous instances much like the one happening in front of them, he nudged her calf with the toe of his shoe. "Five bucks Will comes out on top," he bet, knowing that the youngest Halstead would never bet against Jay. Except, instead of the snippy response she usually gave back in Jay's defense, Greg's proposition was met with silence.
"What do you say Livvy? Five bucks?" he tried again, this time looking over at her; he scrunched his eyebrows in confusion when he took in the sight of her. One leg was bent up onto the seat, the bottom half of it tucked underneath her and her right arm was propped against the vehicle's side holding her head up while her left was balancing a book mere inches away from her face. Frizzy, slightly disheveled brown hair curtaining around both sides of her face, Greg could just make out her eyes whizzing back and forth behind her newly prescribed reading glasses. She was so engrossed in the book, she didn't even realize he made a move to snatch it out of her hands until it was too late.
"Hey!" her little, pipsqueak of a voice managed to shout over the loud grunts and yells of her brothers and the chastising exclaims from her parents all the way up in the front seats. "Give that back!"
"The Outsiders?" He read the book's title aloud, flipping the pages back and forth in his hand. "I remember this book, it was required reading last month for English."
"Don't tell me what happens," Liv pleaded, her arms flailing towards him in an effort to get her book back. "I want to read it for myself!"
"Well, I didn't read it, so I couldn't spoil it for you even if I wanted to." He hated English class even more than he hated Latin, which he felt said a lot. Liv ignored his comment, choosing to briefly revel in her success at getting the book back before stuffing her face right back in the spot he pulled her away from.
He watched her read for a moment, wondering how she managed to find the printed words so much more interesting than Jay's and Will's antics, when a thought suddenly came to him. "Hang on," he blurted out. "That book is at a seventh-grade reading level! You're only in third grade!" His observations went unnoticed by everyone in the car; Jay somehow managed to pull Will into a head lock; Mr. Halstead was turned around in his seat, red in the face, yelling at the two of them to knock it off; and Liv was once again captured by whatever it was S.E. Hinton had written.
"You ever going to get sick of reading that book?" He quipped, reaching his hand out and gently tapping the tattered cover of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders to get her attention. "You must be able to quote the whole thing cover to cover by now."
Her eyes shot up and a blush furiously invaded her cheeks. Shrugging sheepishly, she carefully placed her book on the table without even bothering to mark her spot. He supposed she lost the need to do that after the hundredth time she'd read it.
Caressing the cover, her thumb lingering over the slight tear at the top right corner, Liv softly responded, "You know I won't. It's my favorite."
Smiling softly, he commented, "It is a good one."
"You finally read it?" Her voice was filled with so much enthusiasm and her eyes were filled with so much hope that he wished he was able to just lie to keep them that way. But, lying to her was never an option: not when he was seven, not when he was eighteen, and definitely not know when he was quite certain he was the only one she seemed to want to talk to.
"No," he sighed. "But I did see the movie."
Her shoulders slouched a fraction of an inch. "I know, I made you watch it with me at least a dozen times."
The sly smirk on Liv's face told him all he needed to know. "Damnit Liv," he groaned, flopping down on the full length of the worn couch in the Halstead's basement. Will was off enjoying his freshman year of college and Jay was stuck at hockey practice. Greg was supposed to be at indoor track practice, but his coach decided at the last minute that he only wanted to work with the short distance runners, so he luckily got the evening off. Rather than go home and get started on the mile-high pile of homework he had been assigned, he noticed that Liv was also home and decided to go hang out with her until Jay got home. After a quick "Hello" to Mrs. Halstead and a promise to help Liv with her math homework, the sixteen-year-old found himself being convinced by the twelve-year-old that they should watch a movie instead.
He, who hated homework of all kinds, didn't need to be told twice. Then, because he felt like being a good sport about the whole thing (more like he didn't know what the younger girl was allowed to watch) het gave Liv permission to pick out a movie for them to see.
"No swearing," she grinned in response. "Mom would kill you if she heard you."
"Good," he retorted. "Then I wouldn't have to watch this movie with you again." He let out an exasperated sigh for a dramatic effect. This would be the fourth time in two weeks he'd have to sit through the film version of The Outsiders with Liv, and this time Jay wasn't here to provide alternative entertainment.
"But Greggy! It's my favorite!" Liv whined, curling herself into the only available space on the couch, a small nook behind the bent of his legs.
"Only because you think the boys in it are cute," he mocked, playfully poking her in the arm.
"No!" she rebuked loudly. "It's my favorite because it's based on my favorite book."
"And because you think the boys in it are cute," he repeated, his tone dull and his entire being wishing that he asserted he would pick the movie. He could have very easily picked The Goonies or some other mildly inappropriate but age-appropriate film that the Halstead's kept on hand but rarely ever got watched because of Liv's obsession with The Outsiders.
Not even five minutes into the film, and just as he was about to close his eyes and take a nap, Liv's voice sheepishly confessed, "The boys are really, really cute."
"Reading just isn't my thing, you know that."
She let out a light giggle as she nodded her head vigorously. "Ha, yeah I do. Wasn't sure if maybe that changed though." Her tone turned wistful. "So much has changed." She ran her fingers through her hair—something he knew she only did when she was feeling overwhelmed—before pointing to the left of her. "I mean, even our corner is different." He followed her perfectly manicured fingernail and sucked in a deep breath when he observed with his own eyes just what she was saying.
Their corner, as they affectionately began calling it a little more than eight years ago, had indeed undergone a complete transformation. Gone was the little booth that was almost perfectly tucked away from the eyes of those in the rest of the café and the pictures of all the famous celebrities who stumbled in for a cup of coffee that usually distracted the eyes that did wander in that direction. In their place were a now open space instead of a corner and bare walls, barring the little cliché phrase that had been painted onto the wall. Struck by how different the corner they frequented almost as much as they frequented the DuSable Bridge was, his eyes skimmed the rest of the coffee shop to see if anything else had undergone a similar drastic change; they widened at the realization the whole place had.
"Gina died," Liv informed, having observed his shock at the transformation. "Apparently her daughter took over and totally revamped the place."
A pang of sadness struck him at the thought of the café's original owner passing. In the few months they frequented the place, the woman almost became something like a surrogate family member to the both of them. "That's sad," was all he managed to say. He watched as Liv nodded, her eyes glossing over in either thought, memory, or both. He sat back in his chair and remained silent to give her a chance to mull over whatever it was that had occupied her mind.
"Seems fitting it changed though," she eventually said. "We did."
To say they did was an understatement, but he did not feel the need to share that sentiment. Liv clearly knew it already anyway, no sense in repeating it.
"What happened to us Greggy?" Her baby blue eyes bore into his, begging for him to provide answers he did not have. "When did everything get so…so out of control?"
Whatever he was anticipating coming out of meeting up with Liv, this conversation was not it, especially after having listened to Erin rant this morning about what a raging bitch Liv had been acting like.
"W-what do you mean?" He asked cautiously, not wanting to assume anything.
She sighed and began tracing the words on the cover of her book. He glanced down and noticed how faded they had become; this was definitely not the first, second, or even third time she traced over the once crisp lettering. "I don't know," she sighed again, this time in frustration. "Forget I said anything."
"Liv…" he trailed off, unsure of how to tell her no good came from casting her worries to the side like they were meaningless garbage.
Her eyes connected with his once more and he flinched at how dangerously sharp they had become. "Forget it," she hissed, before softening her tone and asking, "So why did you want to meet me here of all places? And so early too?"
Shaken by how cold her demeanor became, he took a moment to both get over it and come up with an answer. Why did he want to meet her here? He could have just as easily suggested a place closer to Erin's, closer to the district, or closer to where she dropped Madison off for daycare, which was where she was before she came rushing to the coffee shop (if her hastily written and misspelled text was anything to go by). Why here?
Truthfully, he knew the answer, he just wasn't sure if it was too bold of him to say it out loud. "For old time's sake," he eventually settled on, figuring it was not the whole truth, but not completely a lie either. This was their place, where whatever they had together truly developed and took its lopsided shape. It didn't seem fitting to meet her for a cup of tea and coffee anywhere else.
Liv nodded, accepting the answer he gave without any further questions. "I'm glad you texted me. It's nice to get out of Chicago and Erin's apartment," she admitted. "I think I was starting to feel a bit stir crazy."
Happy that she brought up Erin so he didn't have to, he casually asked, "How's uh, how's that going? Living with Lindsay?"
Taking a sip out of the cup of tea he didn't initially notice she had, Liv gave an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders and let out noise that resembled something of both a laugh, scoff, and sigh. "It's fine I guess," she started to explain. "I'm so thankful she offered me a place to stay, but I am also so thankful to be moving out of there next week." He chose not to note how her words didn't match her initial reaction.
"Next week?" He focused on the tidbit of information he already knew about, but not enough of. "I didn't know you already found a place."
"Yeah," she grinned, clearly happy at the thought. "A two bedroom apartment in Lincoln Park. It's pretty much a done deal. Thomas is coming Friday to check it out and if it gets his seal of approval, then Mads and I are moving in!"
Letting out a low whistle, he leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. "Lincoln Park, huh? Pretty fancy."
"It's in a safe area and hardly any more expensive than the places I stayed at while I was in Boston," she snapped, not liking the undertones of criticism in his voice.
Unfolding his hands and holding them up in an innocent manner, he shot her a cheeky smile in an attempt to pacify her defensiveness. "J-just making an observation," he remarked, internally cursing his damn stutter. Why, for once, couldn't he just talk normally and in the way he wanted to? The war took so many things from him, so many things, but he thinks the thing he missed the most was his ability to converse at ease. Mind slowly creeping towards the dark place he was tirelessly training it to avoid, he missed the way the fight drained out of Liv's eyes and body stature and how she drained the last of her cup of tea. He especially missed the way her expression turned quizzical when she asked him a question and he didn't immediately answer or acknowledge it.
"Greg, hey!" Her fingers snapping inches away from his face pulled him away from the edge he was teetering dangerously on the edge of. Blinking rapidly, he shook his head a few times before turning all of his attention back onto Liv, who was staring at him with a look of peculiarity on her face.
"S-s-sorry," he murmured. "What'd you say?"
"I'm getting another tea," she repeated, her eyebrow arching up slightly. "Do you want anything? Coffee, tea, a bagel, or a muffin? Gina's daughter swore to me up and down that the muffin recipes have not changed since she acquired the place." He smiled softly at her remembrance of how much he loved Gina's muffins; in his opinion, they were the best in all of Chicago.
Thankful for the reprieve she did not know she was giving him (or maybe she did, Liv was always very observational), he simply told her to get him his usual and then handed her his card. She stared at it for a moment before declining to take it. "I got this round," she stated when he thrusted it towards her after her initial refusal. "Consider it a thank you for…well, think of something. I'll be right back with your disgusting black coffee with just a splash of milk, and one heated up blueberry muffin with a packet of butter on the side."
Not knowing what to really do with himself now that she was momentarily gone, and desperate to not sink back into his thoughts in fear of losing all control over himself while he was in her presence, he dared to pick up her copy of The Outsiders and thumb over the pages until stopping on a random page near the end. He had never opened Liv's copy of the book and he was only partially surprised to see how annotated and loved the pages were. Permanently creased from being dog-eared one too many times, his eyes had trouble focusing on the actual text of the book when her perfectly slanted, semi-cursive handwriting took up every open space of the pages. Sentences were underlined and circled. Stars were positioned next to paragraphs, hearts next to names. His eyes scanned over her thoughts, curious to see what she personally had to say about S.E. Hinton's words, but they were quickly distracted by the only highlighted section of the entire page he had been focusing on:
You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There's still a lot of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don't think he knows.
The first sentence of the section was underlined multiple times by black and blue pens and the line, 'Tell Dally' was circled in black with a line directing the reader to the margins. His eyes bulged out of his head when he read over Liv's own words, J and G. Speculating that the note must have been put there some time after they returned from Afghanistan the first time given the nature of the text, he reread the highlighted section and Liv's comment two more times to see if he could form anything more than a partial, speculative thought. He didn't get very far in his task though because no sooner had he begun, Liv returned with their drinks and his food.
"Gregory Gerwitz are you actually reading?" she gasped in mock jest, setting a steaming mug of coffee and delicious looking muffin directly in front of him. "What happened to 'reading just isn't my thing?"
Dropping the book and whatever thoughts he was trying to have like they were a ball of fire, he felt like he was a little kid who got caught with his hand in the forbidden cookie jar. "It's not," he promised, undecided on whether he should bring up what exactly he read. Liv's continued chatter resolved that internal debate for him.
"Well, I still think that you'd really like the book and, despite it being eight years later, my offer still stands: you can borrow it any time you want."
Nodding his head in acknowledgment of her offer, which he had heard multiple times at this point, he somehow found the courage to change the conversation entirely. "I honestly still can't believe it's been eight years."
"Yeah well, time flies when you're having fun," Liv said sardonically.
Picking up his mug and taking a drink, just to flinch when the hot liquid burned the roof of his mouth, he dared himself to ask, "Were you? H-having fun that is?"
Liv's eyes sharpened for the briefest of moments; he was honestly surprised to see them soften as she actually entertained his inquiry. "Yes…" she began slowly, carefully thinking about every word that was to come out of her mouth. "I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, fell in love, the whole nine yards. I don't…I don't hate what happened over the past eight years. I just, I just wish you…you and Jay…were there."
His head spun with all of the information she just threw at him in such few words. Much like the highlighted section in the book and her scribbled note, he struggled to form thoughts with any real substance.
"Sounds like you did just fine without us," he muttered, the words, 'I…fell in love,' floating around airily in his head, both mocking him and settling him at the same time.
Avoiding his observation, Liv glanced around the coffee shop a few times until her eyes settled on what was formally their corner. "I didn't really have a choice." She whispered the words so faintly his ears had to strain hard to hear them. "Remember all the times we used to come here to hide us from Jay? We'd sit in that corner for so many hours, Gina practically had to kick us out so she could go home."
"Yeah…" His voice trailed off, not really sure on what her point was.
"Sometimes I wish I could have just stayed in that corner, with you, forever." The words had barely left her mouth when she abruptly stood up and snatched her book off of the table. Shoving it into her bag, she cast one last faraway glance around the café before tentatively placing her hand on his shoulder. Giving it a tight squeeze, she flashed him a small smile that did nothing to express what any of her true emotions were, telling him far more about her than she'd probably want it to. With a quick, "Enjoy the muffin," she walked away, unceremoniously ending their morning outing.
Turning around in his seat, he watched her figure maneuver its way around the crowded tables. The man-made curls in her hair bouncing against her long, wool peacoat with each step her black heeled boots took. Her bag was tucked in the crook of her elbow as her hands worked to slide a pair of black gloves over her hands. To the average onlooker, he knew she would appear to be the epitome of perfection, the kind of girl all others aspired to be. But he wasn't the average onlooker. Where others saw poise and perfection, he noticed how she faltered at the door, pausing just long enough for him to see her hand reach out with a barely noticeable shake. He watched as she gripped the door, knowing that her action wasn't meant to brace herself against the raging winter winds outside, but instead to provide her with a single moment of solace and stability against whatever it was that was warring inside of her.
And in that moment, it didn't matter to him that her sudden departure robbed him of all the things he planned to say to her and wished to ask her—her shaking hand told him everything he needed and wanted to know.